Keeping the postal service up & running, one stamp at a time. Usually silly, sometimes cranky, occasionally a mix of the two.

Yokohama

Three wonderful cards to share this time, representing some of my top favorite categories: toons/toys, food, & animals! One of these arrived months ago, the other two just yesterday, all via Postcrossing Forum tags.

First postcard is this very large one from Yokohama, Japan. I love this old-school Astro Boy artwork.

The sender’s message on the back is intact in the scan below. As you’ll see, she writes of a toy museum in her town. I would love to visit. It made me think of one I have visited, the MINT Museum of Toys in Singapore. It also makes me think I should organize my own toys. Heck, I should organize my everything.

Some delicious food ahead, from Xi’an, China:

They are one kind Chinese pie on this card. There are many tastes: Chinese leek & egg, blanched garlic leaves & egg, Chinese leek & beef, Chinese sauerkraut & carrot. I like the fried taste.

Love that squirrel, sent to me from a Postcrosser in Russia! She tells me:

I love animals so much! By the way, squirrels are very common animals in Russia.

Time for a look at stamps and washi tape! Isn’t this an interesting trio of toy stamps on the card from Japan? I just looked them up, and they are from Hungary (the sender posted this card to me inside an envelope).

Let’s start with a great pair of cards I actually got to choose, thanks to Postcrossing Forum offer tags. This Peanuts postcard, with Patty scratching Snoopy’s chin, came from Japan, and the sender wrote, “I hope you will enjoy this card!” Well, yes… I did ask for it…

The sender in Hong Kong tells me about her local Disneyland:

“(It’s) the smallest one in the world, but it’s still popular, especially with Chinese tourists. Every day the park is crowded with tourists. 😦 and I am not interested in it.”

Ha, when I spent a mere 3 nights in HK a few years back (not nearly enough time to properly see the city), I tried like crazy to avoid Disneyland–but everywhere I turned, there was another image or large advertising display for the place. I finally gave in, & made a whirlwind early-morning trip, before meeting a friend for a dim sum lunch. Fortunately, my mid-week, early-morning trip yielded a very uncrowded park, with no memorable waits for any of the rides I chose. I had a great time!

Speaking of tourist zones, look at this cool 3-D card my pen pal in Tokyo, Japan sent to me when she visited Tokyo Tower! The fact that they had a special mailbox & postmark tells me that Japan is very much more of a postcard-writing-and-treasuring culture than is the U.S. Now I did, on a recent road trip, see a general store in a little community that had its own postcards, which it would mail for you for free, should you fill one out to someone & drop it in their basket. I didn’t take advantage of the offer, as I don’t carry an address book on me. Guess I could have looked up addresses on my phone email app–but I don’t know how many Gs I was getting in that remote area!

The soup comes via a Postcrossing Forum food tag from a sender in Yokohama, Japan, who tells me about the photo on her card:

“This picture of Japanese local cuisine ‘Sanpei-jiru.’ It’s Japanese sake less soup with chopped salmon and vegetables. It’s very good.”

A flying whale from Albany, New York, thanks for a Postcrossing Forum “marine life & sea creature” tag. I see I made a note on the card quoting a line from this Postcrosser’s profile: “I love words.” Now, why did I want to remember that? Oh, I see now: the card was mostly blank space on the back, with the only message being “hope you like this card! I thought it was pretty cool. :)”

So, that happened.

The rug-looking card seems to be a piece of cardboard covered in gift wrap. I’d have guessed contact paper, but this thing arrived in my mailbox flapping apart, attached only at one end. This has been a bit of a theme recently. This one came to me from Blitar, Indonesia, thanks to Postcrossing. The sender tells me I am her first match–she just joined the night before! She also wrote:

“I am 23 years old, living in a small city in East Java province, called Blitar. I love reading too! My favourite is about self development, business/marketing and also recipe book because I’m a chef… I am a food consultant here, my clients are spread in Palembang, Jakarta, Surabaya, etc… so I live nomaden sometimes… Hahaha. I love traveling too! My fave Asia destinations are Thailand and Hong Kong! The food is superb! I hope someday I can go to USA!!! That’s my dream destination.”

Finally, there’s the St. Petersburg card, another Postcrossing draw, this time from a 16-year-old girl in Checkhov, Russia, who wrote that she’d just returned from Camp Artek, where she was in the sea squad, and had a great time learning knots, semaphore, and much more.

Last time, I ended up just showing off the backsides of these eleven postcards I’ve sent out recently. Time to flip them all over! Most of these went out in Postcrossing Forum tag trades–if anything else is the case here, I’ll make note of it.

These three presidential Peanuts characters went out into the world along with my recommendation that each of them would have been a reasonable choice for my nation’s top office. The worst I could say was that Pig-Pen may be dirty–but he’s certainly not the kind of dirty we are becoming used to! That candidate went out to Mumbai, Maharashtra, India, and Charlie Brown (“He is kind & fair to everyone,” I wrote) went to Tokyo, Japan. The third candidate, Franklin (“Oh, how I wish Franklin had run! He’s such a good guy, who studies hard & is always fair”) went to my Peanuts-crazy postpal in Peacehaven, East Sussex, England.

The dancers go out in a regular Postcrossing draw, to a recipient in Waldheim, Germany. She said she’d like to see cards showing people in traditional costumes, so there she goes!

The other two cards are for Postcrossing Forums tags. Cap’n Crunch is for a food package postcard tag, & he’s on his way to Yokohama, Japan. Speaking of recycled things, take a peek a the back of the card, scanned below. The Postcrosser said she loves lots of decorations on her postcards, and that if there were any room on the card, it would make her day if the sender were to include tickets and other items. I did, in fact, recently find some old arcade tickets, so I glued some into what would usually be the washi tape gutter between the address & my message.

Finally, the panda tourists go out in a China Meets the World tag, to a recipient in Yunfu, China. Her list of things she would like to see on a postcard included animals, scenery, cartoons, and funny things, so check-check-checkety-check! She said she also likes pretty stamps, so I made sure she got some.

“I love penguins, but I can’t believe that Badtz-Maru is a male penguin! As you may know, Badtz means X, NG, wrong, and Maru means O, OK, correct.”

No, I did not know those things! I never doubted Badtz’s masculinity, though.

The other two cards are the result of regular Postcrossing draws, and the shark came to me from Tampere, Finland. The sender tells me that there was no snow at Christmastime, but…

“…now it got really cold, so I guess the snow will come soon. 🙂 With daylight only between 10am-3pm, the snow will light up our lives a bit. :)”

Yikes!

Finally, from a high school student in Xiamen, China, comes what she tells me is an egg cake, which she tells me is delicious. Since I can’t read the instructions that accompany the tasty illustrations, I will have to look up the recipe!

The card at the top of the stack was sent to me from Denver, Colorado, in a swap-bot trade of map postcards. You might or might not be able to discern that this is not a map of the Denver metro area. The sender tells me that fall in the Rockies is beautiful.

The two bottom cards come my way thanks to Postcrossing.

The card at bottom right came to me from Yokohama, Japan, having traveled 5,180 miles in 8 days. The temple pictures is in Kyoto, which the writer thinks is one of the best destinations for a domestic trip, with leaves turning red & yellow this time of year.

The third card–the one with the fish party–is from Lithuania, and it made a trip of 5,739 miles in 30 days to get to me. I like that the card’s writer shared this bit of wisdom: “cleaning with kids in the house is like brushing your teeth while eating Oreos.”

All three cards had nice & interesting stamps:

I guess I forgot that we here in the U.S. can make whatever stamps we want, thanks to services like Zazzle.